Peter Slipper’s ex slams ‘travesty of justice’

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GREED, not need, had driven former Fisher MP Peter Slipper to dishonestly fill out parliamentary Cabcharge vouchers to hide the real purpose of three journeys, according to ACT Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker.

In sentencing Mr Slipper to 300 hours of community service and placing him on a bond to be of good behaviour for two years, Ms Walker described the crimes as mid-level offences.

Ms Walker dismissed his legal team's request that no conviction be recorded.

She also rejected the prosecution's submission that a jail sentence was appropriate.

Although he might be estranged from his second wife, Inge Jane Hall, Mr Slipper's first wife was on hand outside ACT Magistrates Court yesterday to defend the father of her children.

Lyn Slipper, the mother of Mr Slipper's two adult children, described the decision as a "travesty of justice".

"There is no justice when the hardest working member of that House has been persecuted almost to the grave because he got in the way of Tony Abbott's lust for the Lodge," she told reporters.

"If anybody should be made to pay and be held to account for waste of taxpayer money it is this court."

Mrs Slipper claimed the Commonwealth had spent $3 million prosecuting the case.

Former federal Member for Fairfax Alex Somlyay - a long-time critic of Mr Slipper - did not comment on the sentence other than to say Mr Slipper had been found guilty and it was up to the court to determine punishment.